


Coffee & Cigarettes

by Trish47



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cigarettes, Coffee, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Post-Season/Series 03, Spoilers, mention of Bob's death, no miracles just hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-24 21:08:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20021062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trish47/pseuds/Trish47
Summary: On a quiet morning after their move, Joyce watches Eleven talk to the Chief.Excerpt: El's been out here for fifteen minutes at least, judging by the pink tip of her nose. Her chatter has ended, traded for quiet contemplation as she perches on the edge of the stump, her half-empty coffee cup resting next to his filled one.





	Coffee & Cigarettes

**Author's Note:**

> I could not shake my feels after the end of series 3, so I had to write it out of my system. I adore Joyce as a mom, and her relationship with El is underrated, imho.

* * *

Life ambles on. It always does. The sun continues to rise and set at its preordained hours, staying awake for ever shorter cycles as winter stretches over Lake Huron and a town so small it makes Hawkins seem like Chicago.

“Sterling,” she’d announced, tapping the name on her fold-out map at a long ago dinner. “Sounds nice, doesn’t it?”

El had broken the silence. “Sounds,” she began, thinking of an appropriate word, “shiny.”

Joyce nodded, an encouraging smile on her lips. “Yeah. It does. And we deserve something shiny, don’t we? A shiny new start.”

“Is it far?” Will asked.

She rushed to ease her son’s biggest concern: “Not so far. Six hours, I think? Too far for weekend visits, but holidays--”

When he’d ducked his head to regard his lasagna, water brimming in his eyes, she’d stopped trying to sell the new place. Sterling would never be Hawkins. It would never be the home they’d known, with the house she’d once torn apart with her own hands. She’d rebuilt then, after the storm had passed; she couldn’t have anticipated a greater tempest loomed on the other side of the eye.

Joyce remembers scraping platefuls of untouched lasagna in the trash that night, her own included.

But here they are, a solid two months later in a rural town where she hopes their ghosts can’t follow.

That’s hard, of course, when Eleven insists on inviting them to talk over a hot cup of Folgers.

Joyce paints peanut butter across four slices of white bread, careful not to tear holes in the tender canvas. Her eyes stay trained on El’s blue puff jacket, wanting to coil the crochet scarf, trailing through the snow at present, more securely around her neck. The need to protect and smother with care doesn’t end with her sons; though El may not be hers biologically, Joyce makes a point to treat the girl as her own.

It’s what he would have wanted. It's how he treated her.

Outside, white puffs stream from El's mouth. She’s chatty this morning, animated with her hands. Through the thin window pane, a muted laugh makes Joyce’s lips quirk as she reaches for the jelly. It cheers her to know their conversation, one-sided as it may be, is a happy one. This time. Some mornings, the same visible breaths accompany a stock-still frame, and Joyce knows El’s circled back to anger again—a stage she finds herself slipping into if she isn’t mindful, proactive.

The twirl that sends coffee splattering over the snow confirms what Joyce already guessed: she’s recounting her school’s holiday dance, speaking in the same rushed cadence she'd use if Hop was in front of her. A staggered tree stump holding his favorite mug—a Dollar Tree design proclaiming him #1 Dad in fat red letters—makes a pitiful stand-in.

Joyce's nerves settle seeing Eleven's happiness. At Homecoming she'd sulked without her friends; the ones she’d made at Sterling High couldn’t compare to the ones she’d been forced to leave behind. She'd spent the night in her room with a fresh box of Kleenex and a radio, refusing the Eggos Joyce offered to toast.

Unable to withstand the pining a second time, she made arrangements with Mrs. Wheeler for Yuletide Ball: Nancy drove Mike all the way from Hawkins so the kids could go together. The siblings stayed all weekend. Nancy and Jonathan retreated to a lodge for some privacy while Mike and El spent long hours laughing, kissing, holding hands and each other. For two days, Hop's stump went without a caffeinated offering—Joyce sat with him instead, lighting the cigarettes she knew he needed, telling him not to freak out about the three-inch rule she deliberately refused to enforce. She'd endured "the talk" with her boys years ago; explaining things to El had been a cakewalk in comparison.

"You're missing it, Hop," she mumbles for the air's ears, placing jelly slices on top of peanut butter ones. A long yawn warms the back of her hand before she picks up the kitchen knife. "She's grown up so much since--"

The blade bisects the sandwiches on the diagonal, trims the crusts from Will's. She wraps them in wax paper, and slides them into brown paper bags. Only one a day for each of them this week, until Friday; her overnight janitor position at the school pays more in benefits than cash. She assigns apples and bananas to individual tastes, adds half a brownie to the kids' for a little something extra, then folds the ridged tops. El is the only one who still smiles over the goofy faces scribbled on the front. As long as she does, Joyce will continue drawing them.

Her watch—one of his, large and weighty enough to keep her tethered when she needs it—warns her they have fifteen minutes before they have to be on the road for school, for work. "Boys!"

When frantic shuffling assures her they're awake, she turns and greets Mr. Coffee with a loving pat, then pours her portion straight into a Thermos. El brews a strong pot, just the way Hop liked it. _Strong enough to grow hair on your chest._ How El stands to drink it without adding a quarter cup of creamer and six packets of sugar, Joyce will never know.

Crossing to the kitchen door, she toes into her boots, loops a scarf around her neck, and slips on her weathered coat while shifting her coffee from one hand to the other. The bitter air invades her nostrils, her throat. Snow crunches under her boots as she approaches the wooden altar and its guardian. El's been out here for fifteen minutes at least, judging by the pink tip of her nose. Her chatter has ended, traded for quiet contemplation as she perches on the edge of the stump, her half-empty coffee cup resting next to his filled one.

"'Bout time to go," Joyce informs gently, clamping her coat closed with one hand. She should have buttoned it.

El's head is slow to rise, and Joyce can see why immediately. She crouches down, places the Thermos in the trampled snow, and grasps the girl's hands, wishing her own could warm them. "Hey," she soothes. "Hey, it's okay."

"Not okay," El retorts, hands becoming fists inside their artificial cocoon.

And she's right, of course. None of this is okay. From the time Will went missing, nothing has been as it should. But she didn't mean for El to interpret her words as a brush-off, like she simply scraped her knee and these are crocodile tears. Joyce knows how real they are: the pillow she holds onto at night is stained with them.

She smooths her hands up to Eleven's wrists—careful not to disturb the band on the left—rubbing away some of the chill. "No." She shakes her head. "What you're feeling. Whatever is going on in here," she explains, poking the length of scarf over her chest, " _that's_ okay."

El sniffles back a wet line before it can freeze on her upper lip. She looks out at the naked trees, staring at the late sunrise, then finds Joyce's eyes again. "It hurts." She takes a deep breath through her mouth. "Being happy hurts."

Water stings Joyce's eyes as she nods in understanding, in agreement. "It does hurt. Big time." Her fingers begin to fuss and fix as she rambles on, tucking fabric, straightening wrinkles, tracing buttons. "All you want is to be able to talk to them, to hear them laugh, to see them smile. You want to hug them tight and tell them how much you love them.” Her hands return to El’s wrists, hooking one finger under the thin blue hair-tie he entrusted to her; three of Eleven’s fingers curl under Hop's watchband.

“And they’re not here.” The words scrape over the gravel in her throat, dragged into reality when they’d prefer to stay buried, unacknowledged.

Eleven coughs and trembles with restrained sobs; tears spill from Joyce’s eyes, but it isn’t over Jim. It’s because of the incredible girl in front of her. El may be inferior in age, but she far surpasses the strength and resilience of most. And--

“It’s not fair,” Joyce proclaims, punctuating her assessment by tugging on Eleven’s crocheted hat. None of it is: her— _their_ —loss, moving hundreds of miles away, starting over, carrying letter-sized wounds in their hearts. Joyce has navigated this territory once already, the scars from Bob's death still pink and ragged. Now they've been criss-crossed with fresh lacerations, the cuts deeper than before. Though it's been two months, she's still bleeding. El shouldn’t have to go through this kind of heartache—not yet, not after everything else she's survived.

“It’s not fair,” Joyce repeats, “and it’s okay to be upset." All she can offer is validation and the balm of an embrace. Her arms spread wide.

El leans forward, resting her head on Joyce's shoulder, a safe place to fall apart, then slowly learn to breathe again. For a brief moment, she’s a newborn again, crying at being robbed of her warm, protected space before accepting the strange, unfamiliar world as her new constant.

This is their new constant: morning coffee and conversation, in that order; cigarettes as needed; waiting and waiting and waiting for things normalize, for the wounds to become scars.

"It sucks," El swears into her coat. When she pulls back, she rubs snot away from her nose, looking more appalled than when it's blood smeared over her hand. "I miss him."

Joyce cups her red cheeks and wipes away tear tracks. "Me too."

A carn horn blares on the far side of the house, and both of their spines straighten, heads turning toward another constant: "School."

Joyce stands, knees aching from the long squat, and pulls El up with her. "I could take you in late?" She points at the mugs. "You could finish your coffee."

Eleven considers the mismatched ceramic as Jonathan sounds the horn in a more persistent pattern. Dismissing the offer with a headshake, she dusts snow from her backside. "It's okay," she says, giving Joyce one of those intense gazes that fill the silence when words won't satisfy. Finally, her lips set in what passes as a smile, though it doesn’t reach her eyes. “I’ll go.”

Joyce can’t help herself. She wraps Eleven in an oppressive hug, so tight she can feel bones poking through the layers of cotton and wool. When she releases her, she adjusts her scarf and sends her off with the biggest, most encouraging smile she can muster.

In another minute, the pre-owned sedan trundles down the shoveled driveway, easing onto the pavement with a groan. Joyce waves them on until they round a bend, then frantically digs in her coat pockets until she finds her cigarettes and lighter. Her frozen fingers struggle with the latter, but it ignites after a few clicks. She touches the flame to the end of the cigarette, takes a few steadying draws, and debates lighting one for Hop too.

She tucks the box back into her pocket instead, blowing smoke up and to the right. “You can’t do this to her much longer. To us.” She flicks the end of her cigarette in agitation, takes a deeper inhalation and holds onto it. Her eyes turn from the stump to the trees beyond, voice rising, cracking. “I know you hear me, Hop.”

Somewhere in the near distance, a twig snaps; a pair of crows take flight into the hazy pink sky, making her breath catch. In this isolated place, she’s become even more twitchy over harmless sounds. She scans the treeline, peering closely at the thickest trunks, but no bear-sized human—or actual member of the _Ursidae_ family—moves between them.

Joyce sighs and extinguishes the cigarette in his cold coffee, then hooks the mug handles through her pointer and ring fingers, retrieves her Thermos with her free hand, and heads into the house before the momentary warmth can fade.

It’s all she has. For now.


End file.
